Verse (pronouced vurs)
(1) In non-technical use, a stanza.
(2) A succession of metrical feet written, printed, or
orally composed as one line; one of the lines of a poem.
(3) A particular type of metrical line.
(4) A poem or a coherent fragment of a poem (as distinct
from prose).
(5) A metrical composition; especially poetically, as
involving metrical form.
(6) Metrical writing, distinguished from poetry because it’s
defined as inferior.
(7) The collective poetry of an author, period, nation, group
etc.
(8) One of the short conventional divisions of a chapter
of the Bible.
(9) In music, that part of a song following the
introduction and preceding the chorus (may be repeated or there may be several
verses); sometimes defined also as those parts of a song designed to be sung by
a solo voice.
(1) A line of prose (especially a sentence, or part of a
sentence), written as a single line (now rare and used mostly in technical
criticism).
(11) Of, relating to, or written in verse.
(12) A subdivision in any literary work (archaic).
(13) A synonym for versify (archaic).
(14) To compose verses, to tell in verse, or poetry (archaic).
(15) In the category system of the Grindr contact app, as a clipping of versatile, a man who enjoys assuming both roles in anal sex.
Pre 900: From the Late Old English & Middle English verse, vers & fers (section
of a psalm or canticle (and by the fourteenth century also poetry)), from the Old
French & Old English fers (an
early West Germanic borrowing directly from Latin), from the Latin versus (a
row, a line in writing, and in poetry a verse (literally “a turning (of the plough)”),
the construct being vert(ere) (to turn (past participle of versus)) + -tus (the suffix of verbal action (with dt becoming s)) and related
to the Latin vertō (to turn around). The ultimate root of the Latin forms was the
primitive Indo-European wer (to turn;
to bend) and the link with poetry is the metaphor of plowing, turning from one
line to another as the ploughman turned from one furrow to the next. Verse was technically being a back-formation
from versus and was thus misconstrued
as a third-person singular verb verses.
The late fourteenth century verb versify (compose verse,
write poetry, make verses) was from the thirteenth century Old French versifier
(turn into verse), from the Latin versificare
(compose verse; put into verse), from versus, as a combining form of facere (to make), from the primitive
Indo-European root dhe- (to set, put).
The transitive sense (put into verse)
dates from 1735 and is probably obsolete except in historic use or as a
literary device; the related forms are versified; versifying & versifier (existing
since the mid-fourteenth century). Verse
is a noun, verb and adjective, versed & versing are verbs.
The English New Testament was in the 1550s first was
divided fully into verses in the Geneva version. The colloquial use in video gaming (typically
as “verse him” meaning “to oppose, to compete against” remains non-standard. The meaning "metrical composition" was
first noted in circa 1300. The use to
describe the (usually) non-repeating part of modern songs (between repetitions
of the chorus) was unknown until 1918 when the US social anthropologist (who
would now be styled an ethno-musicologist) Natalie Curtis Burlin (1875-1921)
published Negro Folk-Songs. That work included a structural analysis of
what were then called negro spirituals (now known as gospel music) which noted the
distinction between chorus and verse, the former a melodic refrain sung by all
which opens the song; the latter performed as a solo in free recitative. The chorus is repeated, followed by another
verse, then the chorus and so on until the final rendition of the chorus ends
the song.
In poetry, the blank verse (unrhymed pentameter) was a structure
frequently used in English dramatic and epic poetry, the descriptor dating from
the 1580s although the form was attested in English poetry from the mid-sixteenth
century and was of classical origin. Definitely
not of classical origin was the free verse (an 1869 Englishing of vers libre). Free verse was controversial then and has
remained so since among the tiny sliver of the population which takes any
notice of the art. The modernists
generally were welcoming of the relaxation of the devotion to rhyme which the
English lyric poets had elevated from art to obsession although they were as
apt to condemn works as the literary establishment. Free verse did not demand any adherence to meter
and rhyme but sometimes lines or even whole stanzas so structured would appear
in free verse, something which might be thought proto-postmodernism.
Verse, stanza, strophe & stave are all terms for a
metrical grouping in poetic composition. Verse is often used interchangeably
with stanza, but is properly only a single metrical line although in general
use, verse is understood also to mean (1) a type of language rendered intentionally
different from ordinary speech or prose and (2) a broader category of work than
poetry, the latter historically thought serious, structured and genuinely art. A stanza is a succession of lines (verses)
commonly bound together by a rhyme scheme, and usually forming one of a series
of similar groups that constitute a poem (the four-line stanza once the most
frequently used in English). The strophe
(originally the section of a Greek choral ode sung while the chorus was moving
from right to left) is in English poetry essentially “a section” which may be unrhymed
or without strict form and may also be a stanza. A strophe is a divisions of odes. Stave is a now rare word meaning a stanza set
to music or intended to be sung. Many of
those who read poetry for pleasure rather than analysis are probably unaware of
this definitional swamp and it’s doubtful their experiences would be any more
enjoyable were they to know.
Grindr and the prescriptive binary
Grindr is an app to help the gay community meet one
another. It has attracted criticism because
it historically offered users the choice of defining themselves only as (1) a
top (a man penetrating or with a preference for penetrating during homosexual anal
intercourse (in gay slang also known as the “pitcher”), a bottom (a man who prefers,
begs or demands the receptive role in anal sex with men (in gay slang also
known as the “catcher”)) or a verse (a clipping of versatile, the sense being a
man who enjoys assuming both roles in anal sex (ie is both pitcher &
catcher)).
Top in this context was from, the Middle English top & toppe, from the Old English top
(highest part; summit; crest; tassel, tuft; a tuft or ball at the highest point
of anything), from the Proto-West Germanic topp,
from the Proto-Germanic tuppaz (braid,
pigtail, end) of unknown origin. It was
cognate with the Scots tap (top), the
North Frisian top, tap & tup (top), the Saterland Frisian Top (top), the West Frisian top (top), the Dutch top (top, summit, peak), the Low German Topp (top), the German Zopf (braid, pigtail, plait, top), the Swedish
topp (peak, summit, tip) and the Icelandic
toppur (top). Bottom in this context was from the Middle
English botme & botom, from the Old English botm & bodan (bottom, foundation; ground, abyss), from the Proto-Germanic butmaz & budmaz, from the primitive Indo-European bhudhmḗn (bottom). It was
cognate with the Dutch bodem, the German
Boden, the Icelandic botn, the Danish bund, the Irish bonn (sole (of foot)), the Ancient Greek
πυθμήν (puthmḗn) (bottom of a cup or jar), the
Sanskrit बुध्न (budhna) (bottom), the Persian بن (bon) (bottom),
the Latin fundus (bottom) (from which,
via French, English gained fund). The familiar (and to Grindr essential) sense
“posterior of a person” dates from 1794.
Versatile was from the Latin
versātilis (turning, revolving,
moving, capable of turning with ease to varied subjects or tasks), from versātus, past participle stem of versare (keep turning, be engaged in
something, turn over in the mind), past participle of versō (I turn, change), frequentative of vertō (I turn), from the primitive Indo-European root wer- (to turn, to bend). Grindr’s choice of a clipping of versatile may
have been influenced by the meaning noted in English since 1762: “Able to do many things well”.
In May 2022 however Grindr added “side”, a category not unknown
in the gay community but distinct from either the A (asexual) or P (pansexual)
entries in the LGBTQQIAAOP string. Deviating
from the binary which (long pre-dating Grindr) has tended to define gay
culture, sides are said to be those men who derive satisfaction from a range of
sexual acts not including anal penetration, preferring instead oral, manual and
frictional body techniques which deliver emotional, physical and psychological pleasure. The general term for these activities is “outercourse”.
The term “side” in this context was in 2013 defined by US
psychotherapist Dr Joe Kort (b 1963) but it attracted little attention outside the
mental health community until he used social media to generate interest and
provide both a clearing house for information and facilitate contact between
sides not catered for by Grinda and others which traditionally imposed the
top/bottom categories as absolute. The
reaction was interesting and sides reported being ostracized or otherwise
marginalized by the wider gay community which tended even to refuse to accept men
could identify as gay if anal penetration wasn’t part of their expectation,
either as top or bottom. Interestingly, reflecting
their different tradition, lesbians seem more accepting of variation in expectations, not putting the same premium on vaginal penetration. Of course the exclusionary exactitude exists
also in the heterosexual world, drawn probably from the long insistence by legal
systems that it was the act of penetration (by human organs or other devices)
which is the crucial threshold in so many of the gradients of sexual assault in
criminal law and Bill Clinton (b 1946, president of the US 1993-2001) was
famously assertive in saying he “…did not have sex with that woman” (Monica
Lewinsky (b 1973)) on the basis there was no vaginal penetration.
Dr Kort took the view that defining penetration as the
sole criterion for “real” sex was just another heteronormative construct and
that in accepting it gay men were allowing themselves again to be victims of a patriarchal
hegemony and others pointed out that many who defined as asexual were actually
those who indulged in sexual activities other than the penetrative. Perhaps neutral on the sexual politics,
Grindr certainly responded to the metrics.
If thousands were interacting with Dr Kort’s social media presence then
there was gap in the market and Grindr was there to fill the gap, “side” in May
2022 added as the third way to be gay, hinting perhaps there was something in
the old phrase “bit of a homosexual”. It’ll
be interesting to see if the marginalization earlier noted manifests on Grindr
because there’s no evidence to suggest the sides have been welcomed to display
themselves as an identifiable group in gay pride events and mental health
clinicians have noted a definite gay hierarchy with the tops atop. The other interesting issue is whether a second
P needs to be appended to the LGBTQQIAAOP string to accommodate the platonic
because the asexuals are clearly having sex, just not as Bill Clinton defines
it. It’s sex Bill but not as you know
it.
Verse by Lindsay Lohan
Not previously much noted for publishing criticism of poetry, modernist or otherwise (although their reporters have been known to gush about the "poetic skills" of footballers), Rupert Murdoch's The Sun on 3 January 2017 did take note of some verse Lindsay Lohan posted on Instagram:
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